It’s unfortunate that I decide to start doing restaurant beer reviews and my first one has to be a crap restaurant. But here goes.

Beletti’s is a modern Italian restaurant that forms part of the Punt Hill Apartments in Dandenong. Perhaps it was a bad night, perhaps not but at the risk of sounding like a judge from Masterchef, a lot of skill was lacking in the food.

First off, to the important part…. The beer list. Mass produced shite covers the beer list:

I don’t believe for an instance that they paid extra to get “real imports”, and these will all be brewed under license, although I didn’t actually buy any as I don’t buy shit beer. So its an assumption ;)

They did stock Beer relevant to the target cuisine so I guess that’s a minor plus.

Another annoyance with the Drinks list was the lack of Canadian Club, my fallback drink.. So straight coke it was….

On to the food…..

I ordered the Lamb Ribs, and my partner ordered the Scampi salad. The rib sauce was overcooked to the point of being burnt which lent a Jerky taste to the ribs… I didn’t really pay too much attention until the end, where I noticed that parts were still raw… So dry and almost burnt on the outside, raw on the inside…. Good thing I eat my steak Blue… The chips, however, were golden and crunchy, the way chips should be (CAN YOU HEAR ME KFC!)

My lovely partner ordered the Scampi Salad and specifically ordered the dressing on the side. What she got was a creamy sauce to the side. And oil all over her rocket salad. The Scampi was cooked perfectly, however the salad itself was old and some of it was even wilted. She also mentioned the Semi dried tomatoes tasted like they were fermenting.

For dessert I ordered one of my favourites, Cremé Bruleé. What I got was a lumpy eggy custard, that lovelly caramalised sugar top that is supposed to be there, was instead a small smattering of suger that wasn’t caramalised properly.

So all in all, there looked to be a lack of skill in the kitchen, as well as a lack of quality control.

The service itself, wasn’t too bad. Other then the two arrogant Italian males behind the bar that did almost zero work, the girls were friendly and did the little things like provide finger bowls for washing away rib sauce, a bowl for placing the shells and kept the water glasses full.

Hopefully it was just a bad night for them, but I certainly wont be going back to find out if that’s the case.

2 Responses to Beletti Restaurant

Sounds hideous. Nice report and unfortunately pretty much the std.
That said, we should set up a dinner at the Courthouse in Berwick, I’ve heard some good thing, and they at least have some euro imports on the beer menu. If that’s simply adding a few Weiss Biers to the line is yet to be seen.